Things That Might Go On My Birthday List

From the good folks at Headline T-Shirts, some very interesting designs.    

Don't we all feel this way?  We agree with Jules Winnfield (Samuel Jackson) about the non-coolness of Twitter.  

Remember that an awful lot of us are the descendants of undocumented immigrants.   

 

 

Here's a UFO the Air Force would get excited about. Speaking of which, where's your movie list? Are you people being difficult on purpose?  Let's go, already. We're missing the entire Lighthall clan, plus all of Nate's friends (including Nate and Dana)!.  I'm ready to move on to the next topic - Top Five Mike and Tammy baked goods.   

More dinosaurs. Everyone (almost) loves dinosaurs.   

 

A movie poster from the movie "The Usual Suspects".   

 

 Darth Vader is getting ready for Cinco De Mayo. Are you?   

Round 1 Accomplished!

Bulls move to Round 2 (second team in after the Celtics) with a convincing victory over the Indiana Chasers Pacers. Loved watching McRoberts going after Joakim Noah. Looked like a schoolyard fight, one guy dancing away while the other kept coming at him. Also loved Granger's comments about hard fouls are OK but you don't hit a guy in the head with your elbow. Luol Deng agrees with that comment and thinks Granger should police his own team first before he worries about others. All in all, a great win and I'm happy that the series went to five games because this was a much more fun way to finish it out. Enjoyed Rose's comment after the game that midway through the 3rd quarter he went up to Thibs and promised not to foul anymore if Thibs let him back in the game. Shows how much Rose is a little kid at heart and we love that about him.  Especially loved Korver getting a basket on a dunk (haven't seen that this year) and on a drive to the basket. Now if we can fix Boozer, we'll be in great shape. Tickets for first game in round 2. Wooooooooo!  Let's go Hawks.     

How I Spent My Morning

From the 1980's and 90's, a comedian named Dennis Wolfberg, whose appearance is a little strange, but whose language and intelligence are very enjoyable. He also had a recurring role as Gooshie, one of the scientists on the classic TV show Quantum Leap.  Enjoy. Afterwards, some discussion.   

So, this morning I went through a similar, though much less painful, procedure at the hospital. It is less painful because I was not awake at the time.  I think Nate and I would like to get some of this stuff to use at bedtime. The anesthesiologist, Dr. Fox, said, "OK, we're going to start the IV now," and I thought, "Well, I wonder how long this will...." They should package this stuff. Much better than Ambien. I will tell you up front that although I have to wait a week or two for the lab tests to come back to be sure, the doctor was confident that everything was fine. I have pictures that the doctor snapped (wallet-size, like Wolfberg mentioned), but Ann won't let me put them in this post. I think she is turning her back on nearly 40 years of being an educator, but I will honor her wishes. I always want to seize the teachable moment and there's nothing better than a visual.     

You are supposed to have your first colonoscopy by the time you are 50, so I am running about nine years late. My doctor, Dr. Carlson, has been telling me to have this done for several years. He leads off the discussion the same way every year when I go in for my annual check-up. "Think about how stupid you are going to feel if you end up dying of colon cancer when it is a very treatable disease if caught early."  I have known Dr. Carlson for almost 30 years as a patient, and taught his kids in high school and coached two of his sons in high school football, so we know each other pretty well. I have also been bombarded by friends somewhat younger than me who have gone through the procedure recently and don't understand my reticence. Let me try to explain it.  

First, the whole process is somewhat low on the dignity scale. Just the act of putting on a hospital gown is disconcerting. Some people look good in a backless gown, but not me. And let's not start on the little footies.  

Secondly, you are in a very vulnerable position during the procedure, and who knows what the doctor and the nurses are doing while you're out.   

Next is the issue of anesthesia. As an adult I have been knocked out for two knee surgeries and now a colonoscopy. It will seem ludicrous, but part of the trouble I have getting to sleep every night is that the act of giving up consciousness is somewhat scary to me. So I'm hesitant to turn out the lights. That plus I can't get my brain to stop singing whatever stupid song is stuck in there. Once in a while it is something from Phil Ochs or Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and that's cool. But just as often it's someone like Sonny and Cher.     

Primarily,  there is the lack of interest in knowing. That may sound strange, but there is always the irrational feeling that as long as I don't know about it, it doesn't exist. Ostriches have nothing on me.  I have talked about this with other people my age and find that this is a fairly common sentiment. We are immortal, don't you know, and those obituaries I've been reading are other people, not me. Where our health is concerned, we are not always at our most rational. Hence the many health and dieting scams to be found on TV and on the internet. And thus our poor choices in food, beverages, or hobbies.    

The worst part of the procedure is drinking the 8 glasses of watery mixture intended to clean out your colon at 6 PM the night before (it is truly disgusting), then drinking another 6 glasses at 3 AM just to make sure. For a while, you're afraid to go to sleep.  Let's be honest here - you're afraid to move.  I slept from 4:20 AM to 6 AM when I had to go to the hospital. I'm not entirely sure they needed to use anesthesia, but it probably cut down on the snoring.  

I am very glad to have this over. It has been a concern in the back of my mind for three weeks and it is a welcome relief to know that I have three years before I have to do this again. For the rest of you, when it comes to health, I am a poor role model. Take care of yourself. I want to make sure you are all  still around when I'm 120.   

What Could Be Cooler Than This Blog‽

The symbol in the title of this post is not a misprint. It is a mark of punctuation called an interrobang.   

 
I learned about it while reading a UK blog called Shady Characters, which is all about punctuation. It was invented in the early 1960's by Martin Speckter, an amateur typographer who edited a journal entitled "Type Talks". He was also in advertising and was looking for a punctuation symbol that would express both exclamation and questioning.  

For example, in the title, a question mark alone doesn’t give any indication of the indignity or shock while an exclamation mark fails to reveal the questioning nature.  Or, as Merriam Webster defines it, "a punctuation mark designed for use especially at the end of an exclamatory rhetorical question." Who hasn't needed that recently‽    

 

 
If this sounds like your cup of tea, check out the history of the pilcrow at the same site.  


It should get you in the right mood to watch the royal wedding later this week. Yawn. Time for a nap.   

Happy Easter

Just for all you iPhone game fans, an Easter game! Well, not really, but a great homemade picture anyway.    

From sketchy bunnies website, the home of really creepy Easter bunnies. I don't recommend this site to anyone with a sense of propriety (although they do have chocolate zombie bunnies and a highlander - there can be only one - peeps gag that's pretty funny).   

Movies

Ann Armstrong's Movie list is up on Marshmallow Fight Blog.  Be sure to go there and comment on her choices. And feel free to go back through the lists and make any comments you want to about how the lists compare and contrast. Think of it as an AP English Literature essay question. Don't worry, you won't get less than a 3 from me. Where's your movie list?  Send them to me at this address. Today! or Tomorrow at the latest! OK, Sunday after you've eaten all the Peeps and Reese's eggs, send them then. I know where you live; don't make me come find you.   

In Memoriam - Sarah Jane Smith

I read in the news this morning that Elisabeth Sladen had passed away on Tuesday at the age of 63. For those of us who watched Dr. Who religiously in the 70's on WTTW Chicago channel 11, watching Sladen (as Sarah Jane Smith) and Tom Baker (as the Doctor) interact late Sunday night was the right way to finish the weekend.   

I read an entry on a Dr. Who fan website that described the arguments that ensue whenever someone asks "Who was the best Doctor?", but states that there are very few arguments when someone asks, "Who was the best Doctor's companion?" Sarah Jane Smith wins hands down every time. I think it helped that she had K-9 with her. Everybody loved the robot dog. The webcomic Dork Tower sums it up well:   

Easter Fun!

So, Easter is upon us and we all know what that means. My one time of the year to hang out with my Peeps.    

 

 

I'm sure my sister has long forgotten this, but my favorite activity around Easter would be to bite the heads off the Peeps and leave the bodies on my sister's bed. I'm pretty sure she thought it was really funny. That's what good little brothers do best - entertain their big sisters! Mary Lou had a room to herself, while my older brother Alan and I shared a room. I know when he went off to college, it was great to have a room to myself for 4 years before I left as well. 

One of the mistakes I made after growing up and in later years was not spending enough time asking my mom what I did all day.  We lived in the country and when we were older, we could ride our bikes into town to play baseball, but for many years my life revolved around our 5 acres and the 88 acres next door that was my Grandpa Armstrong's farm. I have memories of my misspent youth, but they are hardly enough to fill the summer. Now I could barely cover a week of the "What I did last summer" essay that was a staple of the first day at Noble Elementary School (I think teachers needed time to get themselves organized, too). I remember playing tennis on the highway with Alan. We had no net and Route 116 had a 65 mph speed limit, so you had to keep your eyes and ears open, but it was a game we really enjoyed (and traffic heading north out of town was infrequent).  We played a lot of baseball, hitting flyballs to catch and spending hours trying to break our record at the Double Play game - throw a grounder to Alan, he fields it and throws it to me, I throw it back to him, Double Play! unless we threw the ball away and had to start counting again. I don't remember what our record was, but I think we got into the thirties without an error once. I was four years younger than Al, and I'm sure I was the source of most of the errors, but I don't remember Al getting very mad at me that often. Maybe that's the way good big brothers are supposed to be. Our yard was very bumpy - it was quite a feat to scoop up a ground ball without making an error.   

I remember spending what seemed like an inordinate amount of time in the garden, pulling weeds and hoeing. Our family garden was 30 feet wide and 100 feet long. Yes, it was huge. My most vivid memory is of walking down the rows of corn and coming to a complete stop for no apparent reason, then having your eyes refocus to short distance and realizing that a garden spider  

was sitting in a web three inches in front of your nose. With their black and yellow bodies, they blended in with the corn stalks. My, that was fun. We also had chores at Grandpa's house 200 yards down the road. Unfortunately Grandpa raised chickens. We fed and watered the chickens and collected eggs. When you are little, chickens are pretty intimidating. They peck at your hand when you try to pull the egg out from under them and like to fly at you in the yard. Believe me, when it is time to have fried chicken dinner, we weren't unhappy to see the chicken flopping around the yard with its head chopped off. Served her right, was our motto as we put new band-aids on our fingers. Although plucking chickens is a disgusting activity. We also had baling duty when the hay was cut in the field. The hay baler spit out the bale neatly tied up in twine string - we had to carry it to the back of the wagon and stack it with the others.   

We had a metal hook we used to grab hold of the bales as they came back from the baler onto the wagon and you had to stack them carefully so that they didn't come tumbling off the wagon as the wagon followed the tractor around the field. I remember wearing long sleeved shirts in 90 degree temperatures because the hay would scratch up your arms really badly as you carried the bale.   





When the wagon was full, Grandpa would drive back to the barn and we would use the conveyor belt to run the bales up to the hay loft.  







The best part of hay baling season was that we ate lunch at Mr. Nelson's house behind the fields. Mr. Nelson was the official farmer of Grandpa's land. He had lots of equipment and a much larger farm, so he had a deal with Grandpa to farm his fields for a cut of the take. Mostly Grandpa drove the tractor and smoked his pipe. But Mrs. Nelson was the classic farm wife. When we went to lunch after baling from 8 to 11:30, she had more food than an army could eat. Always meat and potatoes (and gravy), bread, corn, beans - the classic groaning table full of food. And always two or three pies to finish the meal. If you didn't like the mince pie, there was apple pie and berry pie as well. (John, you want ice cream with that, don't you?) I think I would have paid to work at Nelson's just for the lunches. I have no recollection what we got paid for working, but I'm sure it was minimal. It kept us out of our Mom's hair for a couple of weeks.  Maybe Al or Mary Lou remember more. I hope so. Next time we get together, I'm looking for hours upon hours of stories. And I think Nate and Mike are, too. They might even like to hear the "riding the sheep when Grandpa's not looking" story again.     

Movie Updates

Two movie updates that were missed a few days ago on the summer movie list.    

1. Cowboys and Aliens - July 29


A movie starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford based on a 2006 comic book (now called a graphic novel) created by Scott Rosenberg. You would think that any alien smart enough to build a spaceship would be smart enough not to take on James Bond and Indiana Jones together. Can't wait for this one to come out.    

2. The Hobbit - December 19, 2012

So this is not a movie for this summer, but the first videos are coming out about the new Peter Jackson production of the Hobbit.  Starring Martin Freeman (of Love Actually and Hot Fuzz fame) as young Bilbo and many of the cast of Lord of the Rings (Ian Mckellen, Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee), it started filming in New Zealand March 21.  Rumor has it that Leonard Nimoy will be the voice of Smaug the dragon.   


The video shown here reminds us what a journey watching the Lord of the Rings movie was and is an exciting beginning to the next year and a half of anticipation.   

In a related article, someone from Forbes magazine uses the information from the book The Hobbit and today's metal prices and decides that Smaug's treasure lair is worth about $8.6 billion, which puts him 7th on the Forbes Fictional 15 list of richest fictional people (creatures) below Jed Clampett and Scrooge McDuck, but higher than Bruce Wayne and C. Montgomery Burns.    

Illinois Public Employee Unions

I heard my first commercial today in the war on Illinois' public employee unions. Now that Wisconsin has been resolved, the feeling seems to be, let's move on to Illinois. The commercial implied that the reason the state is in financial difficulty is that teachers and other public employee pensions are exorbitant. "Public pensions creating millionaires - and we pay for it" the commercial states.  As a public employee pensioner, I wrote a strongly worded letter to my congressman asking him what happened to my millons. I guess I'm not doing this pension thing right. In truth, the average pension paid to Illinois teachers is $40, 798 according to the audited books of the Illinois Teacher Retirement System (TRS). That is higher than the national average, but so is the percentage Illinois teachers pay to TRS each year they are working - 9.4%. As a comparison, employees in the Social Security system pay 6.2% of their salary for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare hospital benefits.  And unlike what I hear people tell me on the radio, Illinois teachers do not receive any social security benefits for their teaching salaries. Let me say that again because I hear an awful lot of people tell me differently. Illinois teachers do not receive ANY social security benefits for their teaching salaries. They can receive medicare, but they have to pay in to medicare while they are working, just like everybody else does.     

The subject of union busting in Wisconsin (and coming soon to Illinois, it sounds like) was addressed by an article in the New York Times by a name from the past - Stanley Fish. When Nathan decided to go to University of Illinois - Chicago, I asked my English Professor brother Alan if he knew anyone at UIC. Stanley Fish came to his mind. The opinion column in the NYT is a discussion between Fish and another UIC English prof named Walter Benn Michaels entitled "We're All Badgers Now." In the article, Fish , a fairly conservative professor, describes his reversal of opinion on unions and the granting of tenure to college professors, but his reasons for the reversal are equally important for K-12 teachers.    

Fish writes:    

"It has not seemed compelling to those who see an ill fit between what is essentially a meritocracy (the question asked in tenure and hiring meetings is always “Who is the smartest?”) and the tendency — or so it is said — of unions to protect members who are marginally competent. If academics opt for unions and “a belt-and-suspenders security,” Naomi Schaefer Riley warns (in her op-ed piece that Fish is responding to), we might “expect that even the laziest, most incompetent or radical professor won’t get fired.”  

Fish goes on, "It is when I read a sentence like this one of Riley’s that I come to my senses and recognize what’s going on. “Lazy” and “incompetent” go together; they point to deficiencies we don’t want our teachers to display. But “radical” is a political judgment. What Riley fears is that if colleges and universities were unionized, teachers with far out, discomforting ideas couldn’t be fired. It’s hard to imagine a better argument for unions (and also for tenure). The autonomy and independence of the academy is perpetually threatened by efforts to impose an ideological test on hiring and firing decisions. The goal is always to create a faculty that has the right (pun intended) partisan hue. Riley makes no bones about it. Letting the unions get a foothold “could . . . make the environment more left leaning.” The message is clear: keep those unions out so that we can more easily get rid of the lefties."

Although the issue in K-12 education is not so politically charged, the loss of union support of teachers and the loss of tenure would be exactly the same. Teachers who pushed the boundaries, who asked questions about why we are doing this or that initiative, or who had an unusual teaching style would be gone fairly quickly. Why would principals or department heads make life harder for themselves by tolerating those teachers if it is easy to get rid of them? In some schools, the answer would be, "Because often they are the best teachers." Unfortunately, in many districts, that is not enough of a reason to keep a teacher around. A new teacher would be cheaper, and we can mold them to our way of thinking. And so it goes. When I ask my friend who is an excellent school superintendent how many teachers he would get rid of because they are bad teachers, he tells me 4 or 5 out of 200. When I ask my business friend how many truly bad (not just difficult, but horrendous) employees he has to work with in his nationally recognized Fortune 500 company, the answer is well over 20% of the employees he knows. When people tell me they wished the schools were run more like a business, that's when I really get scared for public education. I don't know if you've noticed lately, but the American business model is not a shining example of quality. What business would you like public education to emulate: Enron, British Petroleum, Phillip Morris, Halliburton, Bank of America, or JP Morgan? Let's be thankful that public education is not run like business. And lets not get caught up in the fear and the propaganda we hear on the radio. Do you know who is paying for those commercials? Let me give you a hint - it's not middle class workers from the private sector. Here is the "R" section of the member list of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, which is sponsoring the Illinois is Broke campaign which states in big letters that Illinois' fiscal problems are primarily due not to deregulation and suspect banking practices, but to teachers' pensions:  

BRUCE V. RAUNER

Chairman - GTCR Golder Rauner, LLC

J. CHRISTOPHER REYES

Chairman - Reyes Holdings, LLC

LINDA JOHNSON RICE

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer - Johnson Publishing Company, Inc.

LARRY RICHMAN

President and Chief Executive Officer - The PrivateBank

JOHN W. ROGERS, JR.

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer - Ariel Investments, LLC

PHILMER H. ROHRBAUGH

Vice Chair and Office Managing Partner (Chicago) - KPMG LLP

IRENE B. ROSENFELD

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer - Kraft Foods Inc.

JOHN W. ROWE

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer - Exelon Corporation

JAMES T. RYAN

Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer - W. W. Grainger, Inc.

PATRICK G. RYAN

Chairman Ryan Specialty Group

 I picked the "R" section at random. Any other section would be similar in membership. A fairly good sampling of middle class America, wouldn't you say?  These are the people who think public pensions are, and I quote, "CREATING MILLIONAIRES." Maybe it's because they can't stand the thought of a mere teacher being a millionaire like them. They wouldn't be as worried if they had paid closer attention in their math class:   40798 is somewhat less than a million.   

Why Whole Foods will never catch on

So, it seemed like a good evening to go out to the Whole Foods grocery store to do a little grocery shopping. It was raining hard, 45 degrees and the start of the weekend. We had to go to the sporting goods store to get a Bulls shirt for Ann (Wear RED for the playoffs). We needed to go out for dinner, so it seemed like a good idea. People, especially Nate and Dana, tell us that Whole Foods is an amazing place (but expensive). If you are not familiar with Whole Foods, it is what I would classify as a hippie grocery store, where my 1969 first year at college version of the hippie (make love, not war, let's go skateboarding!) has been replaced by the 2011 version (make whole grains, no gluten, please, nice Prius!).  So we drove down to Schaumburg where they have a huge store and wandered around for a while. We picked up a few things: black cherry jam, sea salt caramels, dried veggie chips (for Ann), and saw lots of good looking food. But the trip was ruined when we came around an endcap and saw a display of coconut curry cashews.  Let me say that again, because your brain probably skipped over some of that to avoid the pain. COCONUT CURRY CASHEWS. Now I don't know anybody that doesn't agree that the cashew is one of the finest foods on earth. Nice and salty, crunchy, makes you want to grab a diet coke and have some more. It would seem impossible to improve on that, although dipping them in chocolate is a nice touch. Dipping them in coconut powder and curry powder is not a nice touch. Now Ann (who is a much nicer person than I am) would say that it is impossible to speak badly about this "food" because I haven't tasted it. You and I know better than that, don't we. There are some people on this earth who will tell you that coconut tastes good (I'm talking about you, Dave). So let me tell you a little story.

My mother was one of those cooks who refused to tell you about everything that went into her cooking. I remember having stew one night for dinner, biting into something that sure looked like a potato, only to find out it wasn't. "It's a parsnip," my mom said. "It came from our garden." Well, spiders came from our garden, too, and I don't remember walking out to the garden with a salt shaker to chow down on some of them. "Are these onions in the vegetable soup, mom" I asked. "Don't worry about them; you can't even taste them," she said. If you can't taste them, why would you put them in? Carrots I could understand. At least they added color. But onions? But the harshest memory of my childhood dining was the first bite into that beautiful chocolate cake, a German chocolate cake, I found out later when I quit gagging. A beautiful chocolate cake, ruined by coconut. No wonder we went to war against the Germans. I don't think it had anything to do with Hitler. How could we allow a country to do that to one of nature's most perfect foods - chocolate cake? We let Germany off too lightly after the war, if you ask me.    

So I don't need to taste them to know they are inedible. I'm not even going to start on the idea of cashews with curry powder. I've never believed that two wrongs make a right, so let's just assume they are evil, OK? I think in the new hippie age they are probably what parents use to frighten their children into behaving at Christmas. "You'd better behave or Santa will put coal (2011 version: coconut curry cashews) in your stocking."    

Maybe later we can talk about other hippie (2011 version) concepts I don't understand at all, like play dates for your kids and bike helmets.  Don't get me started.  

Today's Math Lesson: Bubble-sort, anyone?

Here is a list of numbers:    7  12  5  23  11  6  14  8  .  If I asked you to sort them from smallest to largest, it would not be a difficult task.  If I gave you a longer list, say of all the players in the National League with their RBI totals so far, and asked you to sort them, it would take a lot longer, but it would not be a difficult task. In my math classes we made a big distinction between difficult and tedious. Sorting through the list would be tedious, but not difficult. Because of that, it is a perfect task to be given to a machine, such as a calculator or a computer. And in fact, sorting lists is a major job that computers do, whether alphabetically or numerically. Thus the interest on the part of mathematicians and computer scientists in sorting algorithms. An algorithm is a procedure for doing something. Some of you may remember the long division algorithm from your school days. Or if you are my age and were in honors math classes, maybe you remember an algorithm for finding the square root of a number like 27.62 using pencil and paper.   

When you try to get a machine to do something, you have to have a very detailed set of instructions to follow. You can't say, "Well, lets just look over the list and see what jumps out at us."  There are a lot of different sort algorithms out there.  And they all work at different rates based on how the list starts out. Some sorting algorithms are great if the list is not too mixed up, but take a long time for a very mixed up list. Some have difficulty deciding when they are finished.  One of the simplest is the bubble sort. Bubble sort works by repeatedly stepping through the list to be sorted, comparing each pair of adjacent items and swapping them if they are in the wrong order. It is called bubble sort because the larger numbers "bubble up" to the top of the list. When the first pass is done, the largest number on the list is now in the right spot.This animation from sorting-algorithms.com gives a feeling for what bubble sort does. Click on the picture to get a stack of bars of different sizes, which will then be sorted from smallest to largest.  Notice how the bars in correct order seem to "bubble up" from the list. Hit the back button on your browser to get back to my blog.     

This may seem interesting to some of you, but I know many of you (come on - admit it) are thinking how much more interesting it would be if you could picture a bubble sort as a kind of Hungarian folk dance. Well, the folks at AlgoRythmics had the same thought. It is a long video, which gives you an idea of why bubble sort is not used much at all. It is a very inefficient way to sort a long list. Luckily here you can find other sorting algorithms (shell sort, select sort, etc.) as different folk dances. Math + dance - a natural combination.     
 

Bulls Rock!

Well, nobody picked it, but the Bulls end up with the best record in all of the NBA, thanks to San Antonio's 2 game losing streak to finish the season.  No first year coach has ever won more games than Thibs (62) and the support for Derrick Rose's MVP candidacy may be too much for the voters to ignore.  Most importantly the Bulls win because they have the best TEAM in the NBA.    

Bob Kravitz - Indianapolis Star   
"The Bulls, who won 41 games last season and were the No. 8 seed in the East, aren't just good because of Rose; you don't win 60 games with one star and a bunch of Muppets. They're good because they defend. And because they have players like Noah and Carlos Boozer. And because they're deep and exceedingly well-coached by first-year man Tom Thibodeau."  

My star of the year is Luol Deng, who played the most minutes per game, played all 82 games, and played hard and defended hard just about every night.  

The Bulls first playoff game is Saturday; our first game is Monday night. Wear RED - let's bring the trophy home.    

Today's Musical Selection, from 1978

One of the best TV show theme songs of all time, "Angela" appeared on the Bob James album Touchdown, which I still have in the basement. Listening to this music always cheered me up if I had a bad day. As I mentioned yesterday, I think it's the flute part that originally caught my attention. 

The album, released in 1978, is notable for its heavyweight cast, including David Sanborn, Idris Muhammad, Hubert Laws, and Earl Klugh.  Bob James won Grammys in 1981 for One On One with Earl Klugh and in 1988 for Double Vision with David Sanborn. He is still recording, with a group he founded 20 years ago called Fourplay. 


Who's your favorite driver from the Sunshine Cab Company? For me it was always the Reverend Jim Ignatowski, played by Christopher Lloyd before he got famous in "Back to the Future". 

"Reverend" Jim Ignatowski: Yeah, I did some drugs, though probably not as many as you think. How many drugs do you think I did?
Elaine Nardo: A lot.
"Reverend" Jim Ignatowski: Wow! Right on the nose! 


 Enjoy the trip down memory lane!   

Do You Know Me?

Exactly fifty years ago today, I became the first person in history to do something pretty amazing. It took me an hour and 48 minutes and I never got to do it again, but it was the coolest thing ever.   

My last words before doing it were, "Поехали!" which can be translated as "Let's go!"     

In honor of the anniversary today, Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson (and someone else) performed a rather unique flute duet which can be found here. It's a song called Bouree which appeared on the Standup album in 1969, the year I went to college and roomed with Jack Derbyshire, who had this Jethro Tull album and played it constantly. It's been a long time since I heard this song, but I am pleased to say that I have two other Jethro Tull songs on my IPOD (plus some songs from Hubert Laws and James Galway - I was really into flutes in the mid - seventies).    

Moses - I've changed my facebook status to FREE!

For our Jewish friends - 


This video from is from Aish.com and chronicles what the Exodus would have been like if Moses had a laptop. Headquartered in Jerusalem near the Western Wall, Aish.com is a division of Aish HaTorah, an apolitical network of Jewish educational centers in 35 branches on five continents. I'm still thinking I'm glad I'm not on facebook. By the way, Passover (Pesach) begins at sundown on April 18th and lasts through April 26th.       

If you doubleclick on the video, it will run in full screen mode. Hit the escape button (ESC) when it is over to go back. Enjoy.   

Can't Wait for These Geek Movies!

I got an e-mail from Fandango, the movie site, today about upcoming blockbusters, Just thought I would pass them along to you (with some trailers). Plus the weather forecast tonight for Sunday said 80 degrees in Chicago (plus rain, but we'll take what we can get), so summer is coming fast. And its a Marvel-ous summer all the way.   



May 6  -  Thor - trailer

"The powerful but arrogant warrior Thor is cast out of the fantastic realm of Asgard and sent to live amongst humans on Earth, where he soon becomes one of their finest defenders."

Directed by Kenneth Branagh (formerly of the Royal Shakespeare Company) and featuring Anthony Hopkins (of Silence of the Lambs fame).  

May 20 - Pirates of the Caribbean 4 - trailer

"Jack Sparrow and Barbossa embark on a quest to find the elusive fountain of youth, only to discover that Blackbeard and his daughter are after it too"

How can you pass on Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush (looking a little different than he did in "The King's Speech")?    

June 3 - X-Men: First Class - trailer

"In 1963, Charles Xavier starts up a school and later a team, for humans with superhuman abilities. Among them is Erik Lensherr, his best friend... and future archenemy"

Before they were Professor X and Magneto - an origins story.   

June 17 - Green Lantern - trailer

"A test pilot is granted a mystical green ring that bestows him with otherworldly powers, as well as membership into an intergalactic squadron tasked with keeping peace within the universe"

Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan - my favorite superhero.

In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight.  

July 1 - Transformers: Dark of the Moon - trailer

"The Autobots learn of a Cybertronian spacecraft hidden on the Moon, and race against the Decepticons to reach it and learn its secrets, which could turn the tide in the Transformers' final battle."

OK - not the best movie series of all time, but as Grover would say, "Where there is life, there is hope."  Maybe this one will be well done.    

July 15 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 - trailer

"The end begins as Harry, Ron, and Hermione go back to Hogwarts to find and destroy Voldemort's final horcruxes, but when Voldemort finds out about their mission, the biggest battle begins and life as they know it will never be the same again."

 In 3D, unfortunately, but the movie we have been waiting for since it all started in 2001. I remember sitting outside the Barnes and Noble in Crystal Lake at midnight to buy a Harry Potter book as soon as it came out.    

July 22 - Captain America: First Avenger - trailer

"After being deemed unfit for military service, Steve Rogers volunteers for a top secret research project that turns him into Captain America, a superhero dedicated to defending America's ideals."

Steve Rogers, played by Chris Evans, the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four movie, complete with shield. Watch the trailer. At one point the main scientist says, "Ready, Mr. Stark." I'm pretty sure that's Howard Stark, Tony's father, who the Iron Man movies implied had something to do with Cap's shield. Have to read up on my Captain America before the movie.    

Well, that should be enough to get you geeks excited about summer. At least one of these has to be seen at the drive-in this summer instead of the Multiplex. It's a rule.   

(Editor's Note after publication - I did miss Kung Fu Panda - let me know if there are any other cool movies out this summer I can add to the list. Thanks, Tammy)    

Andrew Jackson?

The central bank of Sweden is finishing up a three year plan to modernize their paper money and coins. Included in the new money is a 100 krona bill, which is roughly equivalent to a twenty dollar bill in the U.S.   

When you look at the face on our twenty dollar bill - Andrew Jackson - you realize just how far behind the Swedes we are.  I mean, he's not bad, but who did the Swedish Central Bank choose to put on their bill?   

Yes, that's right. Greta Garbo! Star of "Anna Karenina" and "Camille" and one of the first big stars of the silent screen era. Makes Andrew Jackson look like Homer Simpson, doesn't it.  I'm just saying.    

7 Basic Things You Won't Believe You're All Doing Wrong

You would think that it would be impossible that we would be doing something as simple as breathing wrong, right. But according to this site, and backed by some pretty impressive science, you are doing a lot of things wrong.  I'll let you read about how you are going to the bathroom wrong or sleeping wrong. Let me tell you why you are breathing wrong. I had my annual checkup at the doctor's office yesterday (I'm fine, by the way), and at one point he asked me to take a deep breath. When I did I noticed that my chest expanded, then contracted when I exhaled. Unfortunately it shouldn't be your chest that is moving when you breathe, but your stomach.     

"When upright, most people are habitual chest breathers: We use a shallow form of respiration that makes use of only the top part of the lungs. In reality, most of the blood vessels that take up oxygen are in the bottom, neglected half. Since so much lung power is going to waste, we get less oxygen, and as a result, we're all breathing more rapidly than nature intended us to."   

"It turns out that breathing is one area in which babies are much smarter than you. Babies use a deeper type of respiration called abdominal breathing, which strengthens and makes full use of their diaphragms. It's only as we grow older that we revert to the more inefficient style. Luckily, you can train your body to go back to breathing properly, and over time, you can even breathe abdominally in your sleep."    

"To practice it, try to "inflate" your stomach as you breathe in, while keeping your chest relatively still. Then contract your abdominal muscles on the exhale. Not only will this give you more oxygen per breath, it will eventually strengthen the diaphragm. A stronger diaphragm means you get more oxygen with each breath, so your brain won't need to divert any away from your muscles, meaning that you get tired less easily."      

So, after you fix the way you are breathing, that only leaves six things you are still doing wrong.  Luckily, summer is coming up and we all have more free time in summer (we're not wasting time putting on coats and lacing up those boots, after all). So get to work. I expect a progress report from each of you at the end of the summer, telling me you're now doing these things correctly.  Especially, pooping, for heaven's sake.        

2 John Dough vs 15 Yolanda Supersad

Are you in withdrawal now that the March Madness brackets have played out? Still think Ohio State was a good choice to go all the way. Wait! You didn't pick Gonzaga, did you? You probably need something to help you get over post madness depression. You need a new bracket to work on. Well, you're in luck.  It's time again for the Name of the Year contest. Held on our beloved blogspot website, it is a chance to vote for the best names of the year. Voting begins online soon, so keep your eyes open. I'm guessing a 15 seed like Shalom Dreampeace Compost has a chance for the big upset. Maybe he (she?) can be the next Courage Shabalala (1997 winner) or Barkevious Mingo (2009).    

Double-click on the bracket to get a larger picture.     













Here's a  printable ballot if you need it. 

Viva, Las Vegas!

So, after talking about going to Las Vegas for years, we finally made it there. It was a last minute decision to spend part of Ann's last spring break somewhere other than Wauconda. And it was a great decision. We stayed at the Tropicana, which was a good choice. It's a smaller, quieter (relatively) hotel which has just been remodeled. We didn't see many little kids at all, and the 20-somethings are all at the big hotels. A very nice choice for our first visit.   

Our first night we went to see the Cirque du Soleil show "Mystere".  It was a great show, very funny, and amazing. We sat in the second row from the stage and were happy that we were not picked to participate on stage like some people were. This snail? shown here was about 15 feet high and was part of the show's finale (you weren't allowed to take pictures during the show itself).  





















We saw the fountain show at the Bellagio. Surprise -  a Celine Dion song to go with the water show. She is the new Wayne Newton (or Liberace for the even older crowd) in Las Vegas.    


















 We strolled along the canals at the Venetian - but passed on the boat rides. We'll save that for when Mary comes with us. She loves boat rides.     












Went to the Forum shops at Caesar's Palace and watched the living statues. Once you put your money on the ledge in front of him, he will start moving. I saved my money for the Sports Book and bet on the Reds to win the NL pennant. Sorry, Cubbies, but I don't think this is the year.  










We even tried to win Davey a new convertible at the MGM Grand Casino slot machines.    





All in all, an exceptional time was had by all. I learned the intricacies of playing craps, which was new for me. Ann made a lot of money on the slot machines.  I gave it all back,  After a 4AM finish at the slot machines, when the elevator dinged for the twelfth floor, I thought I had won something. And I had - a short night's sleep before we headed to the pool in the morning - sun and 91 degrees - very un-Chicagoish in March.  




We especially appreciate the advice of the pros, like Mike's father-in-law, Sam, who tipped us off to several good things to try. Thanks, Sam.    

Unfortunately, we didn't get to everything in just three days, so I guess we will have to go back soon. Who's up for blackjack?   

Today's Musical Selection

Today's musical selection is from the movie Leaves of Grass starring Edward Norton, Susan Sarandon, and Richard Dreyfuss. The movie has an nice mix of songs from Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, and the Band.  This song is by Steve Earle and is called "Lonely Are the Free".  Steve Earle is listed as a country singer, but if I think of him as a blues singer, I can listen to him without any problems.  If you haven't seen the movie, check it out. It's a little strange, but very interesting and dark.  If you like it you could put it on your top ten list and send it to me here.  Some of you who read this blog have submitted your top ten list, but a few are still missing. Please join in, it's fun to read everybody's list at Marshmallow Fight.    

Up next, news and pictures of our trip to Las Vegas. Wooooooo!